“I’ll remember it later.” It’s the lie that sentences countless ideas to oblivion each day, especially for writers, since we’re ceaselessly coming up with and processing new ideas.

Fresh ideas have a knack for hitting us out of nowhere: in bed, in the shower, out for walks, at our day job, during meals, etc.

So we say, “I’ll remember it later.” Except we don’t, because that’s one of the biggest fibs since I read and agree to the terms and conditions.

The solution isn’t a mystery: keep a notebook. Or, if you don’t like the bulk, try sticky notes. Or a phone app. Anything that lets you jot down ideas as quickly as you can and come back to them later.

I stubbornly refused to follow this sage advice for a long time, and I wonder how many great ideas were lost because of my pride. I thought my brain was a…

Lately, I’ve run across way too many YA book reviews that decry the extreme unlikability of main characters. Are writers making their protagonists too unlikable? Sure, writing an engaging main character is a complex process — we like our protagonists flawed and thus more interesting, but isn’t it also important for them to be likable enough to root for through an entire novel?

With fictional characters, as with real people,“engaging” and “likable” are subjective, to be sure. In Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train, for example, some readers find the protagonist Rachel so incredibly flawed that she’s just too pitiful to root for; others, like me, find her compelling and sympathetic in her way. The truth is, no characters in The Girl on the Train are heroic in a classic sense, but the story still works. That’s just good writing, so kudos to Paula Hawkins.